


By the Moon the Reaper Weary

by zuzeca



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Angst, M/M, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/pseuds/zuzeca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Optimus reflects on memories and myths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By the Moon the Reaper Weary

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, I actually wrote this for a challenge on the tf-prime LJ community after the end of "Darkness Rising" but in light of, er, recent events I thought now might be a good time to post it to AO3. The prompt was "Megatron/Optimus – Bitter Memories". References some events in Exodus.

_Once upon a time…_

He didn’t entirely agree with Ratchet’s description of his relationship with Megatron. “History” implied the deliberate, ordered description of events, didn’t encompass the vast, emotional currents that permeated every incident, every meeting, every battle.

_There lived a young mech, a data clerk of no exceptional status…_

It was a peculiar irony that the pattern of their story bore a closer parallel to a human fairy tale.

_…and a poor but popular gladiator._

A story steeped in mystery, changed so many times that most didn’t even recall how it truly began.

_The two mechs had little in common, and if not for the machinations of their betters, it was likely they never would have met._

Fantastical beyond believing, but embedded with shards of truth.

_But by chance or destiny, it occurred that they did meet…_

There were others could have been chosen, others to watch, to compile information, to weave a picture of Megatron. The picture which drew him from his den: _‘I am half-sick of shadows’ said the Lady of Shalott…_

_And they inevitably found they shared a dream of revolution._

Impossible to describe how it felt, to come out of that tower, to disconnect from duty and toil, to discover another like himself. Another who yearned for something more.

_And, perhaps just as inevitably, they fell in love._

Strange perhaps, to think how he’d found beauty in that monstrous shape. Stranger still to think how Megatron had found it in his own.

_And for a time they were happy in their shared passion…_

In those first heady cycles, it had seemed that anything was possible.

_But all too soon they found they were not united in their methods._

No matter the struggle, the curse is always impossible to avoid.

_And the dream soured._

It is his secret shame that his most sorrowful memory is not of the thousands of mechs who fell under his command, but of the betrayed fury on Megatron’s face when he was chosen Prime. The moment when everything collapsed.

_And love turned to hatred._

He wonders from time to time, watching the small conflicts play out among the dominant species of this new planet, if the humans truly understand hatred. How it may permeate a society, until it is entrenched in processor and circuit and spark.

_And the clerk knew, in the deepest core of him, that they would not both survive the conflict._

He thought he’d accepted the inevitability of Megatron’s deactivation. A necessary price of peace, like his own function might be. He thought he’d been prepared to pay it. Hadn’t realized acceptance didn’t preclude grief.

_That death was the only way to break the curse of war._

Nothing ever told of what happened to the players after the tale had ended. The gradual fading, both pain and self numbed with time. The only thing in excess: time.

_The end._


End file.
